Ross Douthat, the Republican editor of Atlantic, says about Sarah Palin’s performance [pictured w/Tina Fey], "'proficiency on television’ is simply a prerequisite for capable leadership in a mass democracy.” But then Douthat adds,there's a sense in which the apologists for her performance are getting something right: In the process of performing very, very badly on national television, Palin is holding up a mirror to the rest of the political world, and revealing how the mix of talking points, bluster, obfuscation and BS that nearly all national politicians traffic in as a matter of course sounds when it's filtered through someone who isn't practiced in it, and isn't ready for the spotlight. Her performances reflect badly on her readiness for the vice presidency, no question - but they reflect badly on our whole compromised, spin-happy political class as well.
Douthat has a book, Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class, that takes it for granted we have such a class. And of course we do. Now, Douthat is importantly saying that class has a language that Sarah Palin and millions of other Americans don’t speak, like British upper class English, attacked by George Bernard Shaw in his version of “My Fair Lady.” The Chinese scholar class took this to its extreme with wenyan, a written language the common person cannot understand without the classical education that separated scholar/rulers from the masses. We see this more commonly in the U.S. with “lawspeak.” Now Douthat has discovered we have a “politicspeak.”
It’s all so undemocratic.
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